Alex Singleton is part of the Daily Telegraph's leader-writing team and is a contributing editor at the Sunday Telegraph. You can visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter.

Stopping the state's prying eyes

I used to think people were paranoid when they worried about the state reading their emails. But the scale of our government's domestic spying, reported in Tuesday's paper, is breathtaking.

If the state is going to read our email, let it be gibberish

Here we have a classic case of a law – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 – that was designed to fight terrorism, now being subverted to spy on ordinary citizens. The law is being used by busybody local authorities, worried about fly-tipping, to inappropriately read voters' emails and tap their phones.

We should not be surprised. "US laws designed to stop mafia-style racketeering," says Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute, "have been routinely used on business transgressions.

A UK anti-terrorist law enabled police to detain an 80 year-old who dared heckle a government minister, and a Scottish pedestrian who walked along what was marked as a cycle track."

How long can it be until the state's snooping powers are abused, for example to blackmail a politician who has been cheating on his wife?

Perhaps it is time for citizens to stop the meddling bureaucrats in their tracks by starting to encrypt email.

It is perfectly legal to do this, and encryption is already widely used in business, for example to ensure that credit card details are not intercepted.

Governments are apparently unable to break the popular GnuPG encryption.